Ollantay Itzamná
Thelma Cabrera and Jordán Rodas. Candidates for MLP presidential binomial, 2023
Nearly 700 spokespersons from different territories of the country, members (affiliates) of the political organization Movimiento para la Liberación de los Pueblos (MLP), on December 28, 2022, complying with all the requirements and electoral rules established by the Guatemalan legal system, held their “Plurinational Assembly” to elect and proclaim their candidates for the presidency, vice-presidency and deputies.
The human rights and Mother Earth rights defender Thelma Cabrera, a 50 year old Mayan Mam, was the candidate for the presidency, accompanied by the former Human Rights Ombudsman (Ombusman) Jordán Rodas, as candidate for the vice-presidency.
Rodas entered the country by land to be present at the assembly because he is currently being persecuted and expelled from the country by organized crime entrenched in the State of Guatemala. About 20 prosecutors and judges who tried to fight corruption are now exiled, prosecuted or imprisoned.
Origin and trajectory of the MLP movement
Spokespersons of the MLP. Assembly for the election and proclamation of candidates. December 28, 2022
For the first time in the two centuries of the white Creole Republic, indigenous and peasant communities organized in resistance, in the face of racism even from the classical left, in 2016, by mandate of the national assembly of the Indo-Campesino movement Comité de Desarrollo Campesino (CODECA) decide to create a “political instrument of their own”. In 2018, they create their political organization MLP. At the time, no one took them seriously.
In the 2019 general elections, in an unprecedented way, without material, financial or technical resources, they manage to exceed 10% of votes and place MLP in fourth place. In Guatemala, rulers regularly come to power with 13% of votes obtained in the first round.
Since then, the MLP has not abandoned the territories where the communities in resistance are organized, nor its triad of political bets: Nationalization of privatized goods, process of Popular and Plurinational Constituent Assembly, and the creation of the Plurinational State. The work of formation, awareness raising, organization, mobilization and articulation was constant.
In the sights of the national oligarchy and the U.S. Embassy
Plurinational Assembly MLP. 28/12/22
Unlike in 2019, when no one was looking at MLP, now the political, economic and military elites have it in their sights. And the agents of state organized crime, even from the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) itself, are panting for a swoop against “the disobedient Indian” who seeks to become president of the white Republic”.
Threats against the MLP from the TSE are and have been constant in these almost five years of institutional life. To the extent that the territorial structures of the MLP were practically forced to disappear from the social networks with threats of: “you are campaigning in advance, we are going to sanction you”.
The defender, Thelma Cabrera, is practically absent from her social network accounts because she is constantly slandered with threats of “disqualification”. However, she has never stopped organizing and motivating creative resistance in the territories.
In 2023, MLP will compete from its limitations not only with about thirty electoral companies (political parties) promoted by the same bicentenarians “owners of the country”, and backed/supported by USAID and the US Embassy.
Plurinational Assembly MLP. 28/12/22
This electoral battle will not only be unequal as in 2019, but what is foreseen is and will be an apotheosic electoral battle where all the legal and illegal machinery, plus the US Embassy, plus the neoliberal political parties, plus the agents of the national and transnational corporations and their mass media, plus the reduced middle class, plus the religious hierarchies… will shoot against MLP and its candidate Thelma Cabrera.
Added to this is the racism, classism and machismo that inhabits and shapes the psychology of the generality of the voting population in a country that has been continuously colonized for more than five centuries.
There is no doubt that in the year 2023, the exciting defining electoral contest between Life (good living) and death (neoliberalism) will take place in Guatemala. The Continent of Abya Yala and the world will be expectant, and hopefully in solidarity.
INTERNATIONALIST 360° 